The Sun 'UFO hits wind turbine' splash. Click on bottom right for the full page

"UFO HITS WIND TURBINE," the Sun proudly splashed today. "Dorothy Willows – who lives half a mile from the scene of the hit-and-run – was in her car when 'strange lights' loomed in the evening sky," continued the Sun. "She was among dozens who spotted the mysterious flashing orangey-yellow spheres over Lincolnshire..."

The Guardian News & Media director of digital content, Emily Bell, would like to make it clear that her family had no part in damaging any of those 65ft multimillion-pound turbine blades - but she can help explain those "massive balls of light with tentacles going right down to the ground", as one onlooker described them to the Sun.Those mysterious lights were actually the fireworks Emily's brother Tim had bought at the local garden centre for the 80th birthday party of dad Peter Bell. "It was a medium-sized fireworks display with absolutely no ballistics, and the fireworks were mostly dropping over my parents' house. But we were laughing that we could have broken the wind turbine," jested Emily.

"There we are in the middle of a scoop and we're beaten to it by a red-top tabloid," said Emily's mother Bridget, 74. Emily's husband Ed Crooks was also beaten to the story – and he's the energy editor of the Financial Times.

'Strange lights loomed in the evening sky': pictures of the Bell family fireworks, inexpertly taken by FT energy editor Ed Crooks

As roman candles, chrysanthemums and splitting comets rained down over Lincolnshire that night, the good folk of Louth must have thought it was Christmas all over again. And in the absence of any rational explanation – an aircraft collision, meteorite or catastrophic material fatigue – we are left with the unsatisfactory possibility that it was an alien collision.

"I reckon something the size and weight of a cow would do it," Dale Vince of energy firm Ecotricity told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "If there is a rational explanation – we will come up with it."